System and Method for Selectively Increasing Message Transaction Costs

1. A method for increasing message costs to minimize junk or spam emails, comprising: receiving at a relaying computer over a data link a request from a sending computer to route a message to a recipient address; calculating a delay period, in response to the request; sending a command from the relaying computer to the sending computer, the command causing the sending computer to re-queue the message for re-transmission of the message to the relaying computer; dropping the data link; receiving over the data link a next request to route the message to the recipient address; dropping the data link, if the next request was received during the delay period; and routing the message referenced in the next request to the recipient address, if the delay period has expired.

2. The method of claim 1 : wherein the calculating element includes calculating the delay period once per day.

3. The method of claim 1 : wherein the calculating element includes calculating a random delay period.

4. The method of claim 1 : wherein the dropping element includes transmitting a transport layer command which closes the data link.

5. The method of claim 1 : wherein the dropping element includes transmitting a TCP layer “FIN” command over the data link.

6. The method of claim 1 : wherein the dropping element includes closing the data link at a network layer without sending any message back over the data link.

7. The method of claim 1 : wherein the dropping element includes silently closing the data link at an IP layer.

8. The method of claim 1 : wherein the message is an e-mail message.

9. The method of claim 1 : wherein the receiving element includes receiving over the data link the request to route the message from the sending computer to the recipient address hosted by the relaying computer.

10. A system for increasing message transaction costs to minimize junk or spam emails, comprising a: sending computer; a relaying computer; means for receiving at a relaying computer over a data link a request from a sending computer to route a message to a recipient address; means for calculating a delay period, in response to the request; means for sending a command from the relaying computer to the sending computer, the command causing the sending computer to re-queue the message for re-transmission of the message to the relaying computer; means for dropping the data link; means for receiving over the data link, if the next request was received during the delay period; and means for routing the message referenced in the next request to the recipient address, if the delay period has expired.